Running with Monsters

cocaine. Like any other teenage stoner, I was introduced to marijuana early. It was one of those things that was always around at high school parties, teen dances, wherever kids would meet. It was freely shared. “Do you get high?” was not an uncommon opening question when meeting new people in those days. No stranger to booze, weed didn’t seem like a big step to me. Its effects were gentle, but it somehow seemed cooler. More rock and roll. Young. I liked the communal aspect of sharing a joint and as I traveled that circle, it was inevitable that I would come across stimulants. Pills, powders, and capsules. “Try this, Bob!” someone would say.

“What does it do?”

“It lets you keep going.”

That was the truth. Those little tablets, a multihued rainbow, kept me going all night long and brought things into a sharp, focused perspective. They were just the thing for when the sloppy effects of booze threatened to end the party. Powdered bathtub crank, made by anonymous bathtub chemists, was just as good. A quick line snorted off the back of a hand or a dirty mirror was like a burst of electric energy. Cocaine was around too. It was more expensive than the other stuff, but it had its own mystique. In the seventies, it had come into its own and I was right there to snuffle it up whenever it was around.

But all these hobbies cost money. While I got $500 every month from Social Security after Idie’s death, it hinged upon my being a student. And with my tastes and habits, I needed more dough. I was industrious and I liked money. I ended up working three jobs. Two was typical for a kid back then. I worked in a record store and I also had a job at a little pizza parlor where I tossed dough, slung sauce, and made deliveries. The third job found me at a carpet-cleaning enterprise that contracted with commercial real estate and kept the floors of banks and office buildings spotless. For a kid, I pulled in pretty good money. Of course, that can be a dangerous thing, and it went to my head. Helen still tended to think of me as a twelve-year-old child, and I chafed at the idea. The fact was that I made decent money and financed weekend trips to Las Vegas, I bought good drugs, and I generally did as I pleased. She tried to lay down the law one night in the kitchen.

“Bobby, you just can’t do whatever you want. We have rules here.”

I ignored her.

“Bobby, did you hear what I said?”

“No,” I said as I shook some cornflakes into a bowl.

A tone of anger crept into her voice. “You need to show me some respect, young man!”

“I don’t ‘need’ to do anything.”

And then, for added emphasis, I took a plate from the rack and smashed it on the floor and stalked out of the kitchen and went to my room, where I slammed the door and cranked up the Clash on my stereo. It wasn’t one of my finest moments. It was stupid and small, but it hurt her. And much more than I knew.

A few days later, Helen told me, “I can’t live like this anymore.” She retired. She was done. She packed up and left to live with her sisters in a retirement community on the edge of Los Angeles and I was on my own as a high school senior. The separation was good for us. Helen was free to enjoy her retirement and I learned fast about rent and responsibility. A two-bedroom apartment like ours, a block west of Beach Boulevard, the main drag through town, cost a steep—for then—$650 a month. I took on a roommate to help with expenses and keep solvent, but I was totally unprepared for what I had taken on. Even with the money I had coming in from work and Social Security—and the help I got from family as long as I did okay in school—I had no idea how to budget. I was lost emotionally and financially. If rent was due in four days and I only had $450, I’d immediately go out and spend $200 on cocaine and booze to feel better about the situation, but then I’d be even farther in the hole.

I took on an additional job. There was a nightclub in Costa Mesa called the Cuckoo’s Nest that was a popular spot for surf punks from Orange County and rusticated hillbilly punks from landlocked San Bernardino County and the far eastern edge of Los Angeles County. The club shared a parking lot with a redneck bar called Zubie’s and the local cops and beer-addled urban cowboys had no problems hassling the kids, who, naturally, pushed back. It was a fun place. Chaotic. I hung out a lot with a band called the Popsicles who were managed by Kim Fowley. They weren’t quite punk and they weren’t quite rock. In a lot of ways, the Popsicles were like a male version of Fowley’s earlier group the Runaways. They were good-looking enough to be featured in Teen Beat magazine. If they’re remembered at all now, it’s for their cover of ABBA’s “Tiger.” You had to have some balls to cover ABBA in those days. It was a fun scene, and with pressure from the rent and my living situation in Huntington Beach, I decided to get smart and get out. As soon as school was over and I graduated from Marina High, I moved to a house in Costa Mesa, where I rented a room for $75 a month. A great burden had been lifted from my young shoulders. And I had a lot more money for drugs. That was good.

I stayed enrolled at Golden West College. One of my roommates, Dave Hansen, took courses there too. It was a sun-struck campus of low-slung buildings near the old grasshopper-like derricks that pumped the last drops of crude from the oil fields